Excerpt from How to Pronounce Knife by Souvankham Thammavongsa, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Nicole wore a white fur coat, her blond curls bounced fresh from the salon. She had bright red lipstick on and rouged cheeks. She looked so glamorous and beautiful.

She was yelling at him about something. Furious.

Then Nicole grabbed Tommy by the arm. He pulled his arm back and shoved her away. She didn't fall. She clung to a sleeve, her white heels dragging in the snow. What she wanted didn't matter to Tommy. He shut the door and drove away with the girl in the car. The bottom of Nicole's white fur coat was dirty with mud. If Red had not seen the whole thing, she might have thought the mud was shit. Might have asked how the shit got all over her like that.

From where Red stood, she could tell Nicole's eyes were smeared with mascara, and her quivering lips looked a clownish red now. Women like Nicole are who the romantic movies were made for. They are always the star of their own lives and they always got their man in the end. But beauty, for all it could get you and all that fussing it took to get it, seemed so awful a burden to have to carry and maintain. There was so much to lose. In that moment, Red felt grateful for what she was to others—ugly. It's one thing to be ugly and not know it. It's another to know.

That public declaration of love in front of family and friends like Nicole and Tommy had—Red knew it wasn't something that would ever happen for her. It didn't matter what Tommy did outside of that promise. It had been made, and he would always come back to it sooner or later.

The only love Red knew was that simple, uncomplicated, lonely love one feels for oneself in the quiet moments of the day. It was there, steady and solid in the laughter and talk of the television and with her in the grocery aisles on the weekends. It was there every night, in the dark, spectacular and sprawling in the quiet. And it all belonged to her.

Nicole spotted Red and ran to her. She grabbed Red and held her like they were the closest of friends, and buried her pointy nose in Red's neck. She could feel the poke. Nicole probably would have grabbed on to anyone standing there. Probably. They stood there together in each other's arms. It was the first time someone had ever been that close to Red, had touched her. Both women cried, but for different reasons.

Excerpted from How to Pronounce Knife by Souvankham Thammavongsa. Copyright © 2020 by Souvankham Thammavongsa. Excerpted by permission of Little Brown & Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.